Waking up to ash and dust
by Vain x Life Poetess
Summary: (Multiple crossover) How long does it take for someone to realize the error of their ways and even when they do, can they right a wrong with a right? Or are they destined to be miserable? Henry VII and his wife, did many terrible things to people they loved, when their reincarnated find themselves again, it is in the most unusual of places. Tie in w/the other one shots.


**A/N: Please read and review. I enjoy doing these Halloween one-shots because it gives me a chance to toy with the Tudors and the Plantagenets and my favorite fantasy/Tim Burton/horror movies. In this case I opted for Cliver Barker's Scarlet Gospels which also ties into my other stories and gives a huge twist to the story of Henry Tudor and Elizabeth of York who are reincarnated into unlikely people.**

* * *

 _"I am waking up!  
I feel it in my bones  
enough to make my system blow  
welcome to the new age!  
Welcome to the new age!  
Oh, oh  
I'm radioactive! Radioactive!  
I'm radioactive!"  
~Radioactive by Imagine Dragons  
~o~_

 _"Better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven."_  
 _~John Milton, "Paradise Lost"_

 **(Henry POV)**

If there was one thing I hated it was human. Everything about being human was abhorrent to me. When I played with the puzzle box or as the more adept into the world of the occult called it "the Lamentation configuration box", I experienced many pleasures, many things that reminded me of when I was alive. And I felt that I could do anything again, but then all my confusions started coming back.

Fear, aggression, the feelings of betrayal and I wanted nothing more than to give into my hatred but something stopped. Something always stopped me. Even Hell had its rules and in this case, Hell was preventing me from winning because no matter how hard he tried, in this life, or the previous one I had, and even in Hell where I had established his own order and had millions upon millions following him, fate always came back to bite me in the arse.

* * *

Henry guess that is how it must have felt for Richard at one point. "No." He told himself. "Not Henry" Certainly not the soldier he had reincarnated as who had given his life for his country during the Great War, but Pinhead. The Hell Priest, the man and demon whom people respected and feared. "But never loved." Even when he was a child, he had never been loved.

In his first life, his mother perhaps. But even she always felt a sense of obligation when it came to him. 'Don't do this Henry.' 'Don't do that.' 'You are special. You are royalty and you will be a great Earl, maybe even a Duke if you do as I say'. Then he got sold off by the Yorkist King to William Herbert. He enjoyed his childhood with him and even fancied his daughter, but when he got dragged before Warwick during his petty rebellion against his cousin over his marriage to Bess Woodville, he got really scared and then he became angry. Not because he was afraid, but because he had been unable to save his friend and mentor. His name 'Tudor' saved him and he ran back to his mother like a lost puppy, seeking refuge. His stepfather had been kind to him, as usual and let him stay with them until the Yorkist king (who'd foolishly pardoned his cousin and brother after they beheaded his father-in-law and brother-in-law) found somebody else. They didn't have to wait long because Warwick, as usual, got madder and this time he allied himself with the Lancastrian Queen, Meg of Anjou and she made him put her husband back on the throne. The Lancastrian King was Henry's uncle and he let him stay with his uncle, and restored their lands and titles. His mother was immensely happy. For once, things were looking good for them.

He had seen his mother laugh and smile many times, but those times it had just been for pretending, this time it was for real and he felt happy as well because he truly felt that things were finally going to be alright for them. He laughed. His mouth spewing blood and black matter. He should have known that fate was never kind to him.

 _Is that the reason why you let that evil part of you take over? Why you arrogantly thought you could win over the lord of light, over the devil?_

"Yes." He responded as he saw one of the cenobites struggle to come out of the rubble. His follower ended up dying, extending his hand out to him. Upon closer examination, he realized it was a woman and to his shock, not just any woman but … "Bess…"

"Hell-Priest!" She said.

 _No! No!_ His mind screamed. _Tell her who you are just like Kristi told you who you are! Make her remember!_ But he never got to her on time, his body collapsed on his own weight, suddenly it was as if he was back to being Henry Tudor again, scared and alarmed as people around him were being cut down by Richard who screamed his name over and over again. _"Henry Tudor! Henry Tudor! Come and face me you coward! I am here."_ He had gripped his sword and he was ready to swing at it, he was going to die. He knew it. Richard was a better fighter but Henry … Henry had courage too, and he had the heart of a warrior and if this was his fate –to die- then so be it. But something happened. Stanley's men came and some of his Welsh supporters joined him, and they took Richard down. Some of Richard's men came and helped him get away and get him on his horse so he could run and regroup and come back with more men, but there were too many men around them and they unhorsed him and butchered him there on the spot.

Henry was partly glad that day that the nightmare was over. But a part of him was angry with himself again, that he wasn't the one who killed his greatest foe.

* * *

 **(Henry POV)**

But that hadn't been my greatest foe. My greatest foe had always been the Lord of Light. Lucifer himself. He seemed to delight himself in making people suffer. _Who does that remind you of?_ He chuckled. Oh yes, he loved to make people suffer. There was no question about it, but he loved the sense of hopelessness he had out of every meeting with mortals because as much as he hated to admit it, it brought him closer to that person, to the man he was. Not the man he was reborn as, two times, first when he opened the box as a soldier, second when he became _this_ ; but as Henry Tudor.

 _Now you've accepted it._

 _"_ Yes." He said, and something in his appearance changed, and he no longer found his body heavy. And the female cenobite recognized him immediately as her appearance changed as well. "Henry?"

He nodded.

* * *

All of Hell had been virtually flattened by the falling sky which left the two Cenobites guessing their location as they traveled. They sensed now that they had finally discovered the remains of the city, and their instincts confirmed when they came upon a split in the rock that was barely a crack at one end and yawned to the distance of perhaps a quarter mile at the other. They walked toward the narrow end of the fissure while peering down into its depths. "We should get out of here before this whole thing collapses." Elizabeth told him.

"It is going to collapse otherwise." Henry told her. "You enjoyed your time as … this?"

"Being evil?"

"There is no good or evil, there is only flesh." Henry said, saying the same line he had said over and over to many of his victims. "If we die, at least we won't come back this time."

"What about the world above? Angels and the demons who've escaped?"

"Nobody escapes us."

"Kristi did." Bess reminded him. Henry didn't look too happy about that. But truth was that he didn't want to let Bess know that he let her escape on purpose because he felt grateful, in an odd way, that she reminded him of his past lives, especially of this one.

"That was different. Let's see if this does the trick." Henry said as they walked towards another narrow path. The former Hell Priest was not for the most part superstitious, but there were a few cases that crossed the boundaries of his distrust and had become a profound part of his understanding of the world. The legend of the Thriasacat trees had been proved true. "They are wonderful." He heard Bess say. "Where they always like this? They remind me of the oak tree my mother met my father and the other our granddaughter was under when she got the news, remember? We were there as spirits watching her."

"It is the same one." Henry said, letting his mental shields fall and strangely enough, given what he'd witnessed, letting himself believe. "It's impossible but here it is. God does work in mysterious ways."

"God? How? God let Lucifer fall, how could he know what would happen to you or us …"

"Because he didn't. He was toying with us." Henry said, realizing what this meant for them all along. The Tudors, him being reborn as a soldier of World War I, Bess as the nurse from World War II. All of this conflating into one single event: them finding the box and being reunited and stripped of their memories to serve each other for the purpose of causing others pain.

"Son of a bitch …" Bess said. Her mother was right. The god of Abraham was full of lies and deceit. She laughed. It was really funny, considering that is how they called his firstborn Lucifer 'man of lies and deceit.' "Do you think God will miss this? Chaos and destruction?"

"I don't know, we could ask him and then suffer worst pain than we have inflicted on others. Be my guest."

Bess rolled her eyes and slapped his shoulder. "No playing games with me this time Tudor. I've had enough of your dark humor for two lifetimes."

"You will have plenty of that if we manage to get out of here."

"Yeah, I bet." She said and took his hand as he led them out.

They had played a part in the destruction of Hell. After all, were it not their ambitions, long before this came about, to have everything? She, the queen of Richard III, who had cast a spell on Anne Neville so the little chit could die and then reaped off her sorrows when her own son, her precious little boy, Arthur, died. He, the man who had let his mother do much in his favor so he could become King, who had taken the crown from Richard, who had created a new dynasty and changed the course of history, and finally who had been hailed as everyone's savior, the return of King Arthur when he came back to England, only to end up like this.

If Lucifer had stayed asleep in death, none of this would have happened. There would still be a sky in the sky. So this was their making: this silence, this death. It was what they thought they had wanted all along …

 _No. –_ They thought, their thoughts joined together as one, as when they had comforted each other after they'd been told by their son's priest that he died. _–This is God's making. He made us like this. He made me Henry seek the crown, wish for power instead of happiness. He made me Elizabeth a liaison of my mother, concocting all kinds of spells, giving into the old saying 'hell hath no fury like a woman's scorn' and cursing my own bloodline so my remaining son Henry VIII would do what he did and Mary and Bess would become Queens, changing the course of history.'_

It was all a cruel joke. A cruel joke they had unwittingly participated and just like lambs to the slaughter, they had welcomed the pain with arms wide open.

Henry was wracked by unwanted pain and visions of what his descendants had come to. "Mary."

"Mary? Where? Henry is she here? Our granddaughter, where is she? Is Bess here too? Are our children here too?"

"No." Henry shook his head. "Halloween Town … They are in Halloween Town … They are there … Mary is …" He stopped as he started vomiting and the violence of it left him powerless to control his body. A stone fell against him and Bess screamed, telling him to get up but his face was so distrusted by both of their screams that his lip tore like wet paper. There was nothing left in him now except his last poor hope of willing his eyes to open, so he might look and see whatever final vision Hell and God had in store for him, but most importantly to see her and tell her what he'd seen from his visions.

"I will open my eyes." He ordered himself.

Reluctantly, his body obeyed him. He unstuck his lids, sealed with the gray glue of his dissolving flesh, and focused his eyes on whatever was in front of them. He had a whole panorama in view: the flames emptying to a higher point than ever, as the motion in the ground put new stresses on the stone. Henry's pulse quickened in anticipation of whatever lay on the far side of this silence. It came soon enough. He was watching, he knew, the unmaking of Hell.

"Henry …I must know." She implored. She knew it too. There was no escaping this, they had fooled themselves again into believing the impossible. Taking his hand again, she squeezed it harder, her nails digging into his flesh, begging him to tell her, begging him to fight, to feel pain, to motivate him into becoming the man she'd fallen in love with, the man who was unstoppable and unbound.

But he was no longer bound by Hell's commandments' or Earth's. He was bound by fate, both of them were and fate was going to keep them trap … or so they thought.

The two cenobites looked up at the havoc they wrecked upon this place. "We challenged a higher power." He said, unable to say the next line she knew all too well. A line he could not say, and neither could she, for they were fighters and fighters as they were, they could never admit to defeat.

"We challenged a higher power." He repeated and looked into her eyes, focusing into her deep green orbs. Her hair was wet, wet as the time she had come out of the river, when her ancestral goddess, the river deity, Melusina had told her of her future. Had Melusina been working for God? Had she intended this to happen as well?

No, she refused to believe it. Her ancestor could never do that to her. Henry on the other hand knew better. They were slaves of fate, slaves of their respective ancestral deities and they were still being played like puppets.

"I know … I know …"

"Bess … Mary is not here and neither is Arthur or Harry or Elizabeth, Edward, Meg, or any of them. They never came through Hell's doors."

"Then where are they?"

"Mary died as you know alone and betrayed, there was too much hatred in her as there was too much sadness in Elizabeth. Centuries after their deaths, a doctor who was unable to pass through the gates of Hell or Purgatory landed in Halloween Town, the place you and I visited once and were unable to stay. That place is where our granddaughter is. The doctor took her body and resurrected her through science and forbidden magic so he could have a daughter, but something went wrong and when she came back, her soul came back as well. Mary is just the same as she was when our son bastardized her."

"How can she be when she doesn't remember who she is? Henry … if we don't make it out of here, is there at least a way that we can …"

"She remembers who she is Bess, she recently regained her memories and even if we do find a way to contact her, I am not going to convince her to leave that place. She is … happy."

It was strange to say the word 'happy' when the two had never known it when they were alive in any of their past lives. "She is happy." He repeated as it to convince himself.

"And the rest?"

Henry lowered his eyes. Could he tell her about the curse that Mary unwittingly released when she made a deal with Rumplestelstkin? _No. But I must._ After he told her, Bess gave a sad smile. Her blue lips turning slowly upward.

"I guess the apple didn't fall far from our tree didn't it?"

"No, I guess not." He said. "Even if the curse is lifted, the damage that we have done, that they've done to themselves and to Earth, will never be forgotten."

"Mary will never be happy will she?"

"No, not in the world as she knew it but she will be in that place."

She grinned.

"What do you find so funny?"

"You and me, we said we were going to meet each other in heaven but look at us. Look at what we've become, look at what we've done, not this, but everything and now our descendants."

"They are happy Bess and that is all that matters. Even if we cease to exists, at least we won't come back to hurt anybody. That should make you feel better."

"But it doesn't. You told me what is going on with Elizabeth, she is all alone, another lost soul like her mother and her rivals and she doesn't have them by her side. This must end Henry, we must go back."

What could he tell her? That he didn't care for their family? No, that wasn't right. He did care, Satan damn him! He did but he didn't want to face his family again. He didn't want to see any of them, especially their son and their youngest granddaughter whom they failed the most. Elizabeth had been reborn into a new body, but she couldn't die, she was destined to walk the Earth like Katherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour; and there was nothing those three could do except hope against all hope that the curse that her eldest sister had unleashed upon them was finally broken by another one of his descendants.

Maybe Shakespeare was right when he did his tragedy Romeo and Juliet. Maybe he was being truthful in his metaphor on the two warring houses that were tearing the city apart; they were a plague. Not just on England, but on the Earth.

Flames closed around them. Bess suddenly heard a melody and she looked back and saw the shadow of the river goddess and she knew that this wasn't the end. Digging her nails deeper into his pale flesh, she destroyed his hand, and the rest of his body began to feel it. Pain, pain unlike anything he had felt or caused and he looked at Bess in confusion and anger, but as he saw her secretive smile and her body fading, he realized what was happening and he could not help but smile for this was the natural order of things. This was how things were supposed to go. "And it's not the end." He heard Bess say as she completely disappeared.

Content with that knowledge, that their legacy would forever be one of agony, but also one of infinite possibilities where they would meet again in a new life, this time with the full knowledge of what they'd done, of who they were, and able to right their wrongs, he opened himself to death again.

* * *

 **Present Day**

Andrea Rogers was sick of this. Another day at work hearing her boss complain about her dress, and worst of all her ex as the producer of her show, not doing a damn thing to remedy it. Kermit was a lucky man or frog if she wanted to get technical. He was famous beyond belief and he was sought after by many men and women. Mostly women since he was not into guys.

If she wasn't too busy with her work, she would date him but then again, why would she date her boss' ex who was likely to eat her alive if she found out?

 _No thank you!_

She got out of work, and swung her backpack around her shoulder as she took the bus. The long way home turned out to be not so long. As she got home, he found a man there. It was her friend Michael Marks. "Mike, what are you doing here man? You could have at least called."

He smirked and showed her a box. "And this is?"

"Our past." He said and he touched her hand and put it on top of his other one where held the box and she was flooded with many memories.

He smirked again and said after he released her hand, and let go of the box. "You were right, we are always fated to meet."

"But the box … it doesn't work … how?"

He answered her with a kiss. "After Hell was destroyed, we were reborn into these forms. It's another chance Bess. We are no longer Hell's, this box, or fate's prisoners. We can finally be who we always wanted to be." He told her.

"What if we can't? Look what happened to our descendants, some of them still roam this Earth, bound and broken by that curse ... look at Mary or Sally as she's called now, and look at her husband Jack … look at all of them. What if that is our fate? What if this is some cruel joke?"

"It's not. We were monsters, but we are not monsters now. Let's go back to your office, with any luck we will catch up our three daughters in law who are probably giving your boss' ex a good tongue lashing."

She laughed at that and as before she took his hand followed him.

Perhaps he was right, perhaps this was a second chance to undo the wrongs they did. Then again, it could just be fate teasing them. _It wouldn't be the first time._ Except this time, she was not going to let fate decide for them, this time they would win. _We are fighters. We come from men and women who fought, and whatever fate throws at us, we will face it together._

* * *

 **A/N: I hope everyone enjoyed that. The dialogue is taken from the Scarlett Gospels by Clive Barker which closed the chapter on Pinhead. In an interview he said that he decided to kill the character because he felt it was time to say goodbye to it. The book was also good because it introduced many storylines and the concept of higher powers. When I was doing this, I was going to have Henry VIII being Pinhead but then decided against it because he is already part of the afterlife so I decided instead to go with the old reincarnation trope and that is what I did. Henry VII reincarnates into Elliot Spencer whom we all know as the man who opened the box and became Pinhead. As much as I loved Pinhead dying because it was really well written, I didn't like him dying for my series because there's much more I can do with Henry and EOY reincarnating (this time as normal human beings) and with the memories of all their lifetimes, including their times in Hell and what has happened to their descendants, that I changed the ending. So please leave a review!**


End file.
